First things first, because I will forget otherwise, my show in Doncaster on Thursday is not going ahead (same for Andy Zaltsman's too). I know that there were some people that read this blog who were coming to that one, and I had every intention of telling you direct, but it's quicker to tell you on here. Am really sorry, nothing to do with myself and Andy, it was the venue so any gripes should be aimed their way. I'm still in Manchester at the weekend and am in Leeds again soon, so you can come to one of those instead. But sorry though.

Right, that's the public notices out of the way.

The second Fopp Comedy Night yesterday was an absolute treat.

To be fair, I can now tell you that I had put a brave face on the first one, because it hadn't actually gone that well. I was quick to blame everything else like the lights and sound and audience and stuff, but the fact was, the lights and sound and audience had got me all sulky so I didn't do my best compering on the first night the other week.

However, last night, we got things far more sorted in the room. Just little things like having walk on music makes such a massive difference and stop you as compere feeling self conscious about strolling onto the stage at the beginning of the night to the sound of your own footsteps. The acts were all top notch last night and the audience a lovely group. In fact one of the audience brought chips (they'd been told by the venue that they weren't allowed to eat them in there but I overruled this because I am a great comedy maverick and then spent the rest of the night attempting to compere through mouthfulls of fried potato - just couldn't stop eating them - and I don't even like chips normally).

So all good in the Fopp Comedy camp for the time being. It's going to work that gig, it will just take a little bedding in. They've just extended the run beyond the initial period booked and there are going to be some great Edinburgh previews there in coming months so it would appear that Fopp are happy with it too.

Speaking of Edinburgh, I can now confirm that I am not taking a show up there this year. There are several reasons for this, but the main professional one is that my head isn't in a stand-up place as far as writing is concerned what with me doing this sitcom thing and I don't think I could take a decent show. I did actually begin to write a show (I think I told you) but it was leaning more towards theatre than comedy, and should I ever venture north of the border again I wish it to be with a comedy show and not a lecture. So no Edinburgh for me this year. Not even for a weekend. When I decided to not go, I was worried about not doing the Free Beer Show, but they are taking a year off too, so it has all worked out for the best.

I realise that this may throw the whole fringe into doubt and it may very well end up getting cancelled completely, but I have made my mind up. Ah, you won't miss me. Plus I bought a car which cost roughly the same as a fringe show would, but with the added guarantee that it will still love me come September.

And speaking of love, does anybody know what the etiquette is for taking back sex toys?

Sorry, didn't mean to surprise you with that question, but it is a genuine question nevertheless...

The thing is, one of the downsides of doing the Fopp gig, is it means that I am in the centre of London, and I am unable not to spend money when I do that. I bought some jeans and stuff, and a couple of pairs of DC trainers (I am finding it really difficult to find DC trainers these days, so when I see some I like I have to buy them all, plus it was worth it because I got some free DC stickers which I have put on my laptop), but then I had a wander around the naughty shops.

To tell the absolute truth, I went into the first one because I was being stalked by two blokes selling drugs who I was a bit lippy to and when I realised that they don't take too kindly to smartarses in that dodgy environment and were shadowing me I hid. In a sex shop. Because there's nothing dodgy in a soho sex shop is there?

Anyhow, it would have been rude not to buy anything given as they were offering me sanctuary, so I did what any normal person would do and bought loads of things. By the end of it I was like Keith Moon in Tommy, I don't know what came over me. It was like Supermarket Sweep as I charged around.

But the thing is...how do I put this? I've split one of them.

Now, as you can tell from this entry alone, I have little to no embarrassment about these things as I am a grown up without inhibition, but I don't want them (or you) to think I am showing off.

Fact is, it had nothing to do with any anatomic brilliance on my part as there are enough people that can sadly testify quite the opposite about me (oh yes, I've had it off loads me, and the revelation of the beast has disappointed plenty of lasses in my time I can tell you), so I can't very well walk back into that shop with a toy and proudly announce that I split it. If they asked me to prove my worth they would very quickly realise it was merely a design flaw, but people might start staring at me, and all it takes is for one person in there to say "weren't you the compere at Fopp last night?" and I'll fall to pieces.

So then I thought I might ring up and ask what I should do, but how the fuck can I maintain authority in negotiating a refund on the telephone when I will be required to say the words "Magic flesh mini slut" in a serious manner? I'll end up apologising to them and hanging up.

I think I've been tricked.

In the shop when I was paying, and looking all like I didn't care and wasn't bothered and that, the bloke behind the counter picked up an item and said "I can show you a better one than this for the same money". Now this threw me. I am sure that some folk in sex shops just want to get in and out (of the shop) as quickly as possible, but this bloke is being a proper salesman. So he went and got this other thing and explained in detail why it was better. Now...what could I do? I had to buy the other thing. If I'd have put my foot down and demanded my original choice then it would have just have over confirmed that it was a. for me and b. what I was going to be doing with it at some point. Up until then I had relied on the possibility that he may just think I was buying them for an infirm friend or my dad or something.

So this thing that he made me buy is the one that broke - I am desperately trying to get the idea out of my head that it may have been returned to the shop once already...

I think I'll just write it off, which I have no doubt is what these fucking people rely on. All the other stuff I bought is fine...erm...I would imagine...

Right, well that will do for now, I think you've learned far more than you ever wished to know about me today, but if anything else the embarrassment factor will stop my mum from ringing me for a week.

I've been awake for about two hours now after an extremely valiant effort to sleep normally. I would stop short of saying that I am insomniac, when I try to go to sleep I usually do but staying asleep is another matter entirely and I jolt awake in the middle of the night with no hope in hell of getting back to the land of nod. It's more like a perpetual state of jetlag.

All down to the job of course, comedians effectively work nights and it's tough to get into a routine that suits you being integrated into normal life in any acceptable way, when most people are fast asleep in bed I am to be found wandering around looking for something to do whilst everybody else slumbers. Then when normal humans are arriving at work and grabbing their first coffee of the day I pull down the lid of my coffin. Kind of like a tag team.

Added to all this I have very achey muscles (there are muscles underneath I promise you) due to the fact that I have finally started to use my home gym regularly, but have rather stupidly chosen to begin with an 'Intermediate' training programme as I am too proud to acknowledge that enough time has passed since I was last in training to warrant me being in actual fact a 'Beginner'. How can I possibly stay asleep with muscles this big?

When people have spoken to me about my job (as people almost always want to), one of the list of envies they put forward is the fact that I can sleep during the daytime. "I wish I could stay in bed all day!" they say, normally adding something along the lines of "but some of us have to work for a living", before asking me where I get my ideas from etc etc, but if they could see me now they may change their desire. They forget that when they are relaxing at home in front of the TV, I am either at work or on my way there. I didn't get to see the week before last's 24 until the hour before the latest one on Sunday (that was actually quite cool though - for once the real time was an issue to me as well as to Jack Bauer), and when they are tucked up in bed, I'm sitting in my office trying to revive any lost previous interest I had in internet pornography. It's a bit rubbish to be the only house in the street with a light on sometimes.

There's usually somebody or other knocking about on msn to help pass my time, but tonight I'm the only light on there too. I've exhausted all my dvd extras (tonight I did Eddie Murphy Delirious, Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, and aptly Extras series 2) and I'm not in the mood for a movie.

I've also, very weirdly for anyone that knows me in real life, watched Take That's "Shine" video a lot on YouTube.

I have always been very anti-Take That, mainly for personal reasons. On the final night of the fringe in 2005 I appeared on that 28 acts in 28 minutes show at the Pleasance Dome and used my allotted sixty seconds to decapitate a life size cut out of Gary Barlow with a golf club to rapturous cheering.

I maintain to this day that this was the most exceptional one minute of my performing career, it was literally perfect. I didn't speak a word, walked onto the stage with the cut out, walked off, returned with the golf club, the audience began a ten second countdown - completely un-prompted by me too - I swung the club, took his head off - clean off in one shot mind, no fannying about - picked up the head, gave a sad face and my minute was up.

To the outside eye it was very funny for being so childish, and back then Gary had been absent from the public eye long enough for his appearance as a cardboard cut out to be genuinely random, but deep down it was utterly cathartic for me as Gary Barlow once pretty much ruined my life.

Completely unknowingly I might add in the man's defence.

See, when Take That first started they were, as is well documented, given the instruction to dump their girlfriends. It took a while for them to take this decree seriously, but when Gary did that with his girlfriend she walked straight into my arms. All well and good you may say, but the thing is, the order was the only reason their relationship ended, despite now being in a relationship with a funny little fat drama student, she was still taken with the millionaire pop star for some reason.

It's never easy being in a relationship with somebody who isn't over somebody else, and it's perfectly natural to end up jealous of one's partner talking about their exes, but when you add to that the fact that their ex is plastered on the front of every magazine and newspaper, and more or less constantly on the tv and radio, then you start to develop what can only be described as abject hatred for the previous partner. The dude had done me no personal wrong, but his goading face was driving me insane. The only delight I ever got was in his (very rare) misfortunes - the people of the north west found out about Mr Blobby beating Take That to the Christmas number one by the sound of me cheering.

Naturally my relationship with that lass ended in time, but even then, the sight of Barlow was always enough to curl my lip ever so slightly, and I only really got proper closure that night in Edinburgh when I took his head off. He wasn't coming back to goad me.

Then last year he was back with the reunion, suddenly he was on the front of magazines again, back on telly and on the radio.

So all those feelings of mine came flooding back right?

Not a bit of it.

After watching the reunion documentary I found myself in the utterly alien mood of actually fucking rooting for the guy. I think part of the threat to me had always been this idea that he would one day leave Take That and go fucking major global, but as we know that didn't pan out and he was barged out of the spotlight by that Robbie one. So when he came back he was the underdog, and if you've learned just one thing about me from this here blog it is surely that I can't help but root for the underdog (unless they are playing St Helens in rugby league of course...actually, scrub that, even then, I have never begrudged a lower league side beating us because I remember when Saints were underdogs in the eighties and early nineties, and what it meant to me on the occasions when we came out on top).

So, the reason I have been watching the new Take That video, is because I think it perfectly encapsulates that idea of the underdog winning - you really should watch it, it's a fucking brilliant song and video anyway, but you can see into the souls of all four of them in it, and it's hard not to have your heart warmed when you see that after those years of rejection and living in the shadow of the one who got away, which must have fucking hurt for them, they are back doing what they do and receiving the deserved plaudits for it. Gary Barlow must have experienced with Robbie Williams what I experienced with Gary Barlow, and I know how much it can eat away at you, so I'm fucked if I'm gonna resent the man his moment of glory this time round.

I can be gracious from time to time. It did feel good knocking his head off that night in Edinburgh though, not gonna lie to you.

It's the Fopp comedy night again tomorrow/today (Tues), at the store in Tottenham Court Road, London where I am resident compere (by the grace of god), so if any of you down there fancy it, the invite is open as always. Simon Munnery is headlining so it will be worth a punt. And I don't want you people in the North feeling left out so if you positively have to see me do a gig soon I am doing my Edinburgh 2006 "Out of Character" show for the very very last time (if I can remember it - it will be a version of it anyway) at the Doncaster Civic Theatre on Thursday before a weekend at the Frog and Bucket comedy club in Manchester on Friday and Saturday.

Gonna sleep now, my muscles are burning. Gary Barlow's ears probably are too...

Hey it's me.

Right, shut up we've got a lot to get through.

First things first, I finished my jigsaw. I am aware that I never even told you that I started it, but that is because we must have secrets from each other to keep this fresh. I finished it this afternoon, it was about 5000 pieces in total (although the box said 1000 - this was clearly just an estimate) and after I had finished it there was just time for fellow blogger Bethany Black (who stayed over but we never did nowt) to take a picture of me looking proud of it before I scrunched it all up and boxed it again.

I decided to buy a jigsaw on Tuesday (I think it was). I have been getting rather concerned of late that my head is too full of stuff, and I have been having genuine difficulty in relaxing or - more importantly - concentrating. To be honest, I think there's been a steady build up over the last couple of years. With the exception of one afternoon at Blackpool Pleasure Beach last year, I can't recall a time I have felt contentedly relaxed. I have a backlog of books to read that has just reached forty, I had a load of podcasts to listen to (which I did during the jigsaw experiment), and if anyone is expecting a return text off me from the last couple of weeks then you can simply forget it, I'm not being rude - but I lost track of those fucking ages ago.

So I wanted to unclog and de-chunk my brain, and have a bit of time gently exercising it with the aid of a disintegrated collage of Disney characters that it was my job to reassemble. It worked too. Promise you, give it a go if you don't believe me, I managed to properly switch off my mind for a few hours a day. Good for the soul a jigsaw is. I've ordered another one already to maintain it.

This last week ended up being pretty busy on a professional front...and you'll see that I use the word 'professional' in the loosest possible sense;

Monday was the Free Beer Show in Oxford, and rather perversely was my only normal gig of the week. It was a great night, and the audience response was as lovely as always in the Cellar Bar. With twenty minutes to go before the show started the room was full exclusively of pretty twentysomething girls, and I was mulling over whether me just spending my hour onstage kissing them one by one would be a. too letchy or b. artistically viable. There was also the lingering doubt of c. Possible anyway.

It didn't matter twenty minutes later because some blokes turned up and ruined it, but I would have enjoyed doing a ladies night.

Tuesday I started my jigsaw.

Wednesday, I took little Raji James who used to be on Eastenders on an adventure to Gloucester where I was perfoming at the...erm...I've forgotten it's name already. I want to say Royal Oak. It was something like that.

Raji brought his video camera because he decided he wanted to make a road movie, but the battery ran out so shooting was put on hold. He wasn't filming properly anyway - I knocked a cup of coffee over at the services and had to go and flirt another free one from the lady at the Costa counter and he never filmed any of it. No, me being all cool with the staff wasn't deemed worthy, but me sat moody in a traffic jam...you just try to stop him filming it.

Incidentally - Raji was telling me that he did a Doctor Who convention last week (he was in the last series...but then again, who hasn't been in Doctor Who these days?), and at the end of the day, all the celeb guests went onstage one-by-one to say a quick thanks and goodbye thing to the convention. Raji told me that by the time it was his turn to go up, everyone else had said all the possible funny things so he had to think quick. He went up and said to the crowd "You're all mental". He meant it as a joke. They didn't take it as a joke and just stared at him in silence. He had to say "only joking" before leaving the stage minus a big chunk of his fan base. Fuck I wish I could have been there -I would have loved that. I explained to him that, not only is 'mental' one of the new un-pc words, but also, you really can't call a crowd 'mental' if many of them actually are.

Anyhow - back to the Gloucester gig which was ridiculous. It was in part of the actual pub, which is always a bad sign. No material from me on that particular showing (that will be a trend throughout the following gigs I tell you about), and after making an audience member do a short spot and then another one play a ghost in a makeshift Pantomime whilst I pretended to be asleep (I did not instruct him at any point to get his arse out - he improvised that himself), I sloped offstage to be treated for some reason as a hero by the audience.

Raji regaled the fans with stories of the day that Dirty Den got caught on his webcam, and I stood and let some of the girls draw on my arm. Apparently this is some sort of tradition in Gloucester - the audience give their autographs to the performers. That's what they said anyway.

Thursday I slept.

Friday I did the joy that is Bracknell Comedy Cellar, and like the Free Beer Show, it didn't dissapoint. I'm doing it again in a couple of weeks and already looking forward to it. I think I will hopefully be doing it once a month in the new season - we discussed it as a possibility and I would love to, I gel very nicely with that audience. It was my only compering job of the week and was 'just superb' (that's not me blowing my own trumpet by the way, that's the official line from Katherine at the Comedy Company, so that's her...erm...blowing my trumpet...oh...you know what I mean...don't take that wrong and spread it as a rumour...I just told you I'm hoping to compere it regular...don't ruin it for me).

Highlights of my Bracknell compering involved doing a ventriloquist act with a gobby heckler on my knee as the dummy before putting him back in his box, and also confiscating the driving licence of said-heckler and tearing it up, giving it him back piece by piece as a reward every time he behaved himself. It was his own fault, he should have a photocard licence not one of the old paper ones. I couldn't have torn it then - they're laminated.

Then came Saturday and a return to Bristol to do another one of Mark Olver's out of town gigs. Now, you may remember that a month or so ago I did a gig in the middle of nowhere near Bristol for Mark in East Harptree, and it was an absolute belter. Totally out of the way, in a pub function room with an audience full of locals that couldn't have been more fun. This one on Saturday was exactly the same except for the 'fun' bit.

I don't know what I have done to upset Mark Olver to the point of booking me to play there but for fuck's sake - you should have seen it.

It was in a converted barn (I think that's what it was) and with the exception of a couple of tables of socially adept and slightly arty folk at the front, it was filled with fucking idiots. But proper ones - if Raji had been onstage and said "You're all mental" it would have been perfectly acceptable to even the most stringent politically correct soul. I mean, I have genuinely tried to think of a kinder way of putting that but drawn a blank, they fucking stared at me as I entered the pub because I had long hair and a hat on. When I went to the toilet some lads shouted "he's back but he's took his hat off", so I must have been the topic of (I'm guessing unfavourable) conversation, and am sure that they will be having conversations about me right now along the lines of "D'ya remember the day that bloke came in with a hat on?".

After the gig, compere John Robbins said to me that every gig we have done together I have at some point said onstage that it is the weirdest gig of my life. On Saturday night, I was telling the truth. Myself and a lad from the front row did topless pull-ups on one of the support beams on the roof. That was the show.

The only plus point was that during my 'act' a girl who I had been stood near to during the first half of the show and had heard her loudly saying very unkind things about the first act on, fell off her chair and flat on her arse. It was just about worth doing the gig for that alone. She was a horrible individual, clearly not much going on upstairs - and whilst I have no problem with stupid people generally, I do have a problem with them when they are sneery, and when they look down on others.

Pompous stupidity - that's what I don't like. I can handle "pompous" or "stupidity" - just not at the same time.

Her superiority complex fell away as she sat on the beer-drenched floor whilst everybody else laughed at her. One bloke had a microphone and was laughing into it, which must have been properly embarrassing for her because it made the laughter so loud, and perhaps a little taunting. That was certainly my intention anyhow.

And there we go.

So, to recap, my week onstage from Sunday to Sunday included doing human horse racing, acting out a pantomime whilst being mooned at, making an audience member do a comedy act to a jeering crowd, doing a ventriloquist act with an audience member dummy, ripping up a punters driving licence, laughing at the misfortune of a stupid girl and doing topless pull-ups in a converted barn for money.

And the thing is, these things were me making the best of the nights. They weren't flippant they were utterly fucking necessary. And they worked.

Well maybe not the barn thing, but nobody was ever going to be right for that audience (perhaps Jethro at a push).

This sort of pace would kill a lesser man.

And you wonder why I spend my off-stage time doing jigsaws.

I don't know if I am going to have time to finish writing this entry as I am meant to be in Oxford at 9 tonight for the Free Beer Show, so already I am putting a little bit of excitement into this as you now know I am rushing it.

So, let's go over the weekend just passed...

Friday was a jaunt out to Hereford to headline the Comedy Company gig at the Courtyard Theatre. They've have some fucking great gigs the Comedy Company do - they are in charge of the one in Bracknell and the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield (both of which I have recently played and lauded as fantastic on this here blog). They are doing something right with their shows, because they're always sold out and always an absolute doddle to enjoy as an act. And they are geographically far apart so it isn't down to the area, and they book me so it's nothing to do with the standard of acts. They're just...dead good (I don't have time to consult a thesaurus).

So Friday in Hereford was a pleasure. As is so often the case there was one table (right at the front) of about 15 lads who were gobby, but even though they went a fair way to disrupt proceedings, I never felt it was malicious. Just a bit too drunk, and a little lacking in awareness that there was another couple of hundred people in the same room running out of patience with their shouting.

I just about contained them, but a win is a win no matter by how many points it is attained.

I've recently gotten very bad at checking my watch before I go on, so am often unprofessionally asking the compere from the stage how long I have done. When I asked compere Maff Brown this on Friday (and he was proper good too, I've only ever seen him at weird gigs but on a proper night he really came into his own), he shouted that I had done twenty. This was at a point when I was almost certain that I had done closer to forty - I had bantered for ages, done a fair chunk of material, and had several glorious heckler battles which I milked for all they were worth, but he was shouting out that all this had happened in a mere twenty fucking minutes. Which turned out to be a lie, but it was one of the only times on a stage I have stood there and thought "shit, I'm only half way through and I am knackered...I don't know what to do now..."

I still did another twenty, and the gig ended with a smashing response, and a lady in the audience urging me to throw a chair at the table of lads at the front. I did consider it, but ultimately common sense prevailed and I left the building carried heroically on the shoulders of the grateful Hereford locals.

I went straight from Hereford to a hotel up North as I was going to Hull the following night for the rugby. I am staying at far too many hotels these days, that cliche of them all looking the same is coming true. The room I stayed at was identical to a room I stayed in just before Christmas in Manchester, literally identical - eerily so, I was having trouble shaking the idea that the time in between had just been a dream and I was actually still in the other room. In my defence, I had just done a long awkward drive and was delirious with fatigue. Either that or I am at the onset of madness.

Can't remember anything about the rugby on Saturday, I am sure Saints won, they usually do. Although, if I had travelled all that way to see them be half-arsed and not win, then I would probably block it out in my head anyway.

They didn't win...happy?

On Sunday, after going to Meadowhall in Sheffield again and getting very upset that I couldn't find any clothes to fit me, and then going to the cinema in Wakefield to watch Ghost Rider (which was okay actually), I trundled up to Leeds to headline Trinity All Saints college.

It wasn't shaping up to be the best gig before I went on. Nothing at all to do with the acts who were all great, but the audience really needed a kick up the arse. I went on and it was all right for a bit as I did some patches of material, but I was also finding myself frustrated that they weren't coming along fully for the ride no matter how playful and cute and charming I was being, so I put the material to one side and had a chat with a lad in the front row called Alex.

The series of events that followed could never have been predicted.

Alex was studying to be a journalist, so he was cheekily condemned for that by yours truly. It transpired he wanted to do sports journalism. I said, and I have no fucking idea why I said this, or where I was going with it, "Tell me a sport and I'll do an impression of it and you can review it".

Now, that's fucking lame isn't it? I mean, that's properly rubbish.

Horse racing was shouted out.

I'm not even going to tell you how it happened (mainly as I can't remember), but ten minutes later Alex was on his hands and knees on the stage as my horse (SeaBiscuit, as suggested by the audience) with me on his back and another two lads in the same position by the side of us getting ready for the inaugral Leeds Comedy Horse Race. It was stupid of me as I was already suffering physically from a pulled muscle in my neck (no idea how that happened) and a sprained wrist from boxing (well, from overplaying Rocky Balboa on the PSP, but it still counts).

The object of the race was first to the edge of the stage. We lost, but I declared it a false start and then had the marvellous idea to make it best of three (or best of five as I originally mooted).

Here is the footage of the first race, apologies as always for quality.

Click here

So the night was coming to life, in the most unlikely fashion.

Race two, and SeaBiscuit started to perform much better:

Click here

An amazing win! Good girl SeaBiscuit...It was all on! That audience had been subdued for the previous two hours, but suddenly they were getting what they really wanted - human horse racing.

The third and final race turned to anarchy, but all that I had to do was reach the end of the stage to be crowned champion. Don't forget that I was already suffering from injuries too, my wrist heavily bandaged beneath my lucky DC sweatband, but sometimes you have to search for the hero inside yourself, search for the secrets you hide...sometimes you've just got to fucking fight for what you want...

Click here

Now that was some fucking dive. I'm 33, the other contestants are still fucking teenagers.

My drive home was utter agony, but the applause and cheers that still rang in my ears were as good a soother as any painkiller.

I'm going to Oxford Now.

Love you

Mr Ray Peacock
Reigning Leeds Comedy Horse Race Champion and still getting away with murder

So the inaugral Fopp gig came and went on Tuesday, and vague teething problems aside (just technical stuff like lights and that) I am confident it is going to be a really nice gig. I was certainly feeling it out cautiously, to the point where I probably looked like I wasn't interested, but I was just finding my feet and you wait and see what happens at the next one, now that I get it.

It was a decent turn out though, particularly for an off-broadway show on a Tuesday night. The Fopp gigs are simulcast, there is one on in Bath at the same time (a bit like Live Aid - in fact, it's just like Live Aid) resident compered by Mark Olver. We had more people in the audience in London than they did in Bath, they had a better compere - swings and roundabouts really isn't it?

Speaking of being cautious, as I was a paragraph-but-one ago, I got pulled over by the Police last night for driving "cautiously".

I'd just been back to Tescos (I'd bought Rocky Balboa on the PSP earlier and when I got it home there was no game inside) and had pulled over on the way back to check that they had put the game in the box this time. I have no idea why I didn't check in the car park of Tescos but I didn't. Anyhow, the police pulled up behind me just as I was pulling away and began to follow me. Half a mile later they pulled me over because I was only doing 28mph in a 40mph zone.

Now, how the fuck does that work?

With this information they said they had good reason to believe I was driving under the influence. I agreed happily to a breath test as I don't think I have had a drink for about a month or something. They couldn't do the test however because they had forgotten to bring out the tube for it...

I didn't know what they wanted from me, so naturally, I started being a smart arse.

They asked me why I was driving so slow, I said "Because the police were behind me, I'd normally proper put my foot down here".

They don't like it do they? They hate all that sort of thing.

Then they decided that they wanted to look in my car, saying they would check the front and back seats and if I objected to that. I said I objected because there is no back seat as it is clearly a convertible. I then did an obviously pretend look of panic and said "and there's no way you're looking in the boot!".

It must be the late nights that make them so cranky.

They got their torches to start the search and said "Before we look, are there any weapons in your car?".

I've never felt so mischievious in my life - those of you familiar with my 'act' will know that I sometimes take a 'weapon' onstage.

"Just my lightsabre".

I wasn't doing their suspicions of me being drunk any good, but I was telling the truth. After the usual thing of them asking if I was 'some kind of comedian', which never ever fails to make me laugh (and they always always ask!), I had to get my lightsaber out of the car to prove it.

If anybody out there is genuinely doing dodgy things in cars late at night, and you want a failsafe device to distract the police, just buy a fibreglass tube that lights up. They transform from arsey officers of the law into giddy children, practically fighting each other for "a go on it"...they even appear to completely forget why they pulled you over in the first place, abort their searching of your car and after asking you to "tell them a joke", will send you on your way to get up to more trouble unopposed.

Press news now:

I was very disappointed that the editor of Chortle Steve Bennett decided not to report my exciting Loughborough shooting news in favour of a story about Russell Brand being in a St Trinians Film, but I at least managed to maintain my celebrity profile in this cutting from a local newspaper which shows myself and recent Chortle award finalist Ed Gamble in all our glory on the night of the Newcastle Heat. I particularly like the fact that they dismiss dyspraxia as "innebriation" in the article. Nice touch.



I don't know why my hair looks so curly at the bottom. Ed thinks I look like Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) in the photo, but I don't see it myself. I think Ed just tries to cause trouble sometimes. See how he is making the picture look like it is me that is in the competition and he is the great brilliant proper comedian? I think I look lovely but with slightly sad eyes...

I did the EDComedy Celebrity Pub Quiz this evening which was as fine a time as always, and little baby Raji James who used to be on Eastenders came down and did his impression again. It was a fun fun fun evening, the quiz has really picked up now with a proper sized regular audience. You could do a lot worse than go down to The Hob in Forest Hill on a Thursday evening to join the fun.

And other than that I have just been writing lots on the sitcom that myself and, occasionally, Steve Morrison are writing together. I think the pilot episode is about 60% done from a script point of view, next comes the great lark that is cutting and structuring. I am not too good at the cutting bit, it feels like circumcision to me. I'll let Steve do all the cutting stuff. He can write the jokes as well if he ever gets around to contacting me again.

I'm gonna go and sleep now, I know it isn't much of a post today but I'd been away from you for a bit and found myself missing you so wanted to at least say something. And I am away all weekend (Hereford, Hull, Leeds) so wont be able to write then, so just wanted to, you know, just say a quick hello, and tell you about the police thing and show you that newspaper clipping and that...

Which I have now done. So I'll go back to my solitude.

You have a lovely weekend whatever you're doing - always in my thoughts xx

I would place Loughborough University pretty near the top of my favourite gigs list. My stand up showreel for when I was doing the character was filmed there, and with a full house it was a pleasure to play, brilliantly run and perfectly set out.

Over the last couple of times I have been there it has fallen off a little bit - it's still a great gig - but you get the feeling that perhaps the comedy night is no longer as high up on their list of priorities anymore. After the events of Saturday evening, they should perhaps consider re-establishing it's importance.

It is usually one of those brilliant "fighty" gigs that I so adore. There is a pretty high percentage of students doing sports studies and the like there, and they are not known for backing down in a heckle battle. The downside of this is that it can perhaps get a little bit 'laddish' in there, which I have always attempted to diffuse, oddly with full-on agressive assertiveness in previous performances, and I have never come off that stage in second place to the audience. Never lost, never will. Denny Crane.

I've had support acts crash and burn badly, on one ocassion the barracking from the drunken throng reduced one of my support acts to tears in the dressing room afterwards. Going onstage and doing well after this has happened was bittersweet to say the least, my conscience sensitive enough to be prickled as I entertained the idiots after they had behaved so badly towards a fellow jester.

There was none of this on Saturday night though. It was much quieter than it has been in previous years, down from peaking at 600 to around 250 now. I was told that it was the busiest it's actually been this season, which cheered me and made me feel less like the shortfall was because I was on. There were sections of the room closed off so it still felt reasonably full in fairness.

The audience were kind of laid back and the hostile bantering was pretty much non-existent as I went through my set, got the laughs where they should be, had a bit of teasy casual chat with a couple of individuals in the crowd (who took it as it should be took and returned fire with similar good humour - can you believe there were two blokes called "Giles" in the same audience in 2007?) and the night went off without a hitch. There was the feeling that it was a 'nice' gig. Nothing flash, nothing that would set the world on fire, just a run of the mill, gently-paced, no frills comedy show.

In the dressing room afterwards I felt a bit disappointed not to have had the rush of blood that only a proper comedy battle provides, especially given that I had sub-consciously prepared myself for that what with it usually being the norm there.

The following morning the disapointment turned to relief. Fucking major relief, when the news reached me that somebody had been shot after the gig, in the very room that I had been so well-behaved in a few hours earlier.

Now, regular readers will know that I am not adverse to winding up small sections of audiences from time to time, but I have always considered that if this was going to end badly they would shoot me - not each other. I don't know how I feel about the possibility that somebody who had been in the audience on Saturday night was carrying a loaded firearm and, more worryingly, was willing to use it. I'm trying my best not to get overly thoughtful about the whole thing and it's implications to the way I conduct myself onstage, I was just so so relieved that I hadn't had a "fighty" gig. Not even because I could have been on the receiving end, but more that I can't be blamed for getting people wound up. If somebody had pulled a gun after the show at the Krater in Brighton the other week for example, then my manager would be warranted in ringing me up (as he did today) and saying "What did you do to cause that?".

He gets funnier and funnier doesn't he, boys and girls?

So, as far as I am aware, the receptive party was a security guard who was shot in the stomach and he is doing okay by all accounts. Nothing life threatening I'm told, and the trigger happy individual dispensing his own warped justice is in the secure company of the local constabulary. I'd also like to express my apologies publically to those folk who had left me messages in the early hours of Sunday morning that I didn't reply to until Sunday afternoon. It told me a lot about myself that you were all so certain that it must have been me that was shot.

It's only a matter of time, but until then let's not concern ourselves with it.

On Sunday night I had a gig at Hecklers Comedy Club in Aldershot, which I've not played for fucking donkey's years. I very nearly didn't get to play it on Sunday either as a Lorry driver forgot how to drive his Lorry the right way up on the M25 and lay it on it's side for a bit. Three hours to do forty miles - it really wasn't looking good and panicky phonecalls were being regularly exchanged with the venue, but once the road was cleared I put my foot down drastically and got to the venue at 8.35, just in time to walk onto the stage at 8.40.

The relief on the face of compere Michael Legge on seeing me in the wings was lovely, and as I walked on he whispered in my ear that he has never been happier to see somebody. I thought he meant this to be about the gig, but as he carried on cuddling me after I'd been on (he tried to do a kiss on me too) and then eventually steered the conversation round to me being in Doctor Who, I realised that it was more about that. It's been a curious thing to have people who I have known on the comedy circuit for many years suddenly start acting slightly star-struck just because I have a little role in Doctor Who. And make no mistake - it really is a little role, I have no doubt it will disappoint (if it manages to escape the cutting room floor that is). When I did XSMalarkey in Manchester the other week, Toby Hadoke (the compere) had his fucking photograph taken with me.

Tell you what though, traffic stresses aside, I really liked turning up at a gig, going straight onstage and then just leaving the venue again. I was in and out in about 40 minutes. It was productive, that's why I liked it, didn't give me a chance to think and meant that I was literally thrown into a situation where I was almost in shock. I remember standing on the stage and thinking "Fuck - I've started" and just relying on my considerable charm and wit (and my top notch material, natch) to get me through. They're such a nice audience at that gig though, they own it but they aren't territorial and are more than happy to welcome strangers (acts) to the party with open arms.

And that's about my weekend summed up. I have spent this evening attempting to build a home gym and it has already paid for itself as the fucking workout that just building half of it has given me should see me through till next year. I have also got around to putting a Star Wars poster that I have owned for twenty years into a frame. I can't believe it has taken me so long - it's been blue-tacked up on more walls than I care to remember, including my parents house and my houses at University, but only now is it properly encased in glass and on my office wall as it should be.

Shootings, traffic accidents, home gyms and framed posters...yeah, you fucking wish you were me...

A run of gigs at Fopp Music Store on Tottenham Court Road in London begins tomorrow (Tuesday) with me as resident compere. It's a kind of new material thing but with an established headliner (tomorrow's being Andy Zaltsman) and for those of you down in the big smoke, it would be perfectly agreeable to see you there.

No guns please.

I have come to realise that nostalgia dominates a sizeable chunk of my thinking time, I am regularly casting my mind back to events in the past.

Don't get me wrong, I rarely sit and long for times gone by, but I think it's a reasonably healthy thing to look back and perhaps retrace your footsteps to where you are now on the journey. The other night I found a load of cds that I thought had been lost but were secretly hidden in the bottom of a display cabinet. They were basically cds that hadn't quite made the grade to be included when I bought a cd bag, and like all things that are dismissed from your life at some point, with the passage of time, they regain their appeal. Amongst them I found two cd singles by a band called "Younger Younger 28's". They were the house band for Late and Live at Wilkie House in 1999, the year of my first fringe show, and despite not neccesarily being my kind of thing, hearing their stuff again inspired reminiscence about that year's fringe, of late nights being carefree in Edinburgh, making new friends, and of making tentative steps into the comedy world. One of the down sides of thinking back is it always comes with a share of melancholy.

When I arived in Wakefield yesterday I took a brief detour to a house that I lived in when I was at university. It was on Low Row in Darton, Barnsley. Basically there was Top Row and Low Row, two adjacent lots of terraced houses on a hill, away from civilisation, that had been used as housing for the miners working at Wooley Colliery. By the time I arrived there as a student, the mining community had long since been bludgeoned and crucified by Adolph Thatcher, and many of the houses were being used for cheap academic accomodation. It was a three bedroom house and I paid twenty pounds rent a week. Twenty fucking quid! Can you imagine? Council tax was included as well!

I've often thought that someday I would go back and buy a house on Low Row. Probably only be about a hundred quid or something, and I was always keen on the fact that the area was in a bit of a timewarp.

I've changed my mind now though, what was left of the Wooley Colliery site and surrounding countryside is now a massive housing development so Low Row is no longer as isolated as it once was, and a bit more green is missing from the beautiful West Yorkshire views. I fucking hate "progress".

I spent a moment by my old house. It still has my curtains up, and it looked kind of deserted. I still have a key for it on my key ring, but resisted the urge.

After a brief sojourn to the soon to be closed Bretton Hall (where I "studied"), I carried on to my first destination proper. I had agreed to do a Q&A about comedy stuff with a Youth Theatre called Yew Tree which is run by my friend Sarah who was in my year at Bretton.

In the third year of University, everyone was full of ideas and aspirations. Everyone was going to set up a theatre company (apart from me who was already bandying around the words "Big And Daft") and everyone's company was going to be the one that 'made it'. Yew Tree is the only one that has actually stood the test of time.

I hadn't really given the Q&A thing much thought if I am honest, but I realised as I sat in the middle of a semi-circle of chairs occupied by the members of the group, that this was actually far more daunting than I had ever considered. It was like being on a date, but with loads of girls (and 3 boys) all at the same time. I'd assumed I'd get the usual questions of "who's your favourite comedian?" or "how did you get into comedy?" but not a bit of it. I was asked profundities like "Do you find that the confidence you get from performance affects your confidence in real life?". It was a really odd yet thoroughly enjoyable 90 minutes, mainly because it made me question my own approach and reasonings within my career. I have no idea if my rambling would have been any use to them, but it was to me.

They were an amazing group of young people, and I say that without so much as a hint of patronising - they were genuinely brilliant. About the same age as the kids that used to hang around my old house and throw bottles at the windows, but these ones were spending their social time creating art and respectfully probing the opinions of a 33 year old man who steadfastly refuses to grow up and get a 'proper' job. It made me feel really proud of my friend Sarah for managing to inspire this creativity in people that could just have easily ended up chucking bottles at windows too.

Some of the older members of the group also came down to my gig at the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield last night, which brought with it even more pressure. It was all very well that I could talk the talk in the Q&A, but now they were going to witness whether or not I was able to convert this into a succesful reality.

An afternoon spent talking about what I do and what I believe served as a productive reminder for me and was fresh in my mind as I took to the stage to headline the gig. An hour and ten later, and I had more than adequately proved myself in the practical session. There was much banter, bits and bobs of material, a moment of severe tension with a heckler who had been solitarily incredibly rude in a room full of people that were enjoying themselves in an attempt to destroy the fun, and a resultant diffusing of this tension by me when I invited a different audience member onto the stage (I believe he was Father Christmas, and I sat on his knee to check that I was definitely getting presents this year and, more importantly, that the cunty heckler wasn't getting them).

I think I am starting to work out this ongoing question about why I get quite so much audience interraction at my gigs. I was reading an interview with Billy Connolly where he was talking about his preference for the audience to "become one entity". Much as I admire Billy Connolly (and I am, as everyone should be, a massive fan), I am completely at odds with that opinion.

I hate audiences being one entity. Or rather, I should say, I don't like the idea of them starting as one entity. I attempt to bring them together over the course of a set into that, but along the way I like everyone to feel included and entertained on a (perhaps mythical) personal level. I like them to feel as though they are as important to the event as the one with the microphone, and that they have a degree of power to influence where the evening goes. I invest in my audiences just as much as they invest in me. It doesn't always work, but it would be boring if it did. The trick is getting them into the right state of humour to do this in an enjoyable way, but the risk is always that - like last night - somebody will feel this 'power' and abuse it in order to attempt to ruin the evening. I say 'risk' - it actually ultimately works in my favour. It's an idiotic thing for somebody to do, as by that stage the majority of the rest of the audience were already enjoying playing with their new friend and weren't going to be supportive of somebody trying to piss on the bonfire. They certainly wouldn't tolerate somebody trying to bully their new playmate, and by the end of my set I was being vociferously encouraged to go over to the dissenting voice and smack him.

I had to walk past him as I left the stage to go back to the dressing room, and as I got closer and closer to him the audible expectancy in the room rose. Of course I didn't smack him, but I did lean in close as the rest of the audience clapped and cheered me and whispered "Don't you look a cunt?". Like most cowards who attempt to attack from the dark, he didn't give an answer when I was right next to him.

He knew the answer though.

I was driving home from one of my great gigs (or 'happenings' as they are feeling more like these days) having a ponder as I tend to do when the monotony of the passing glare of the motorway lights starts to bore me.

My ponder of choice the other evening was whether there was any other job in the world whose success relies quite so much on the protaganists self-belief and confidence being adequately topped up as stand up comedy. I came up with "sportsman", and after that I was stumped. You can genuinely stand or fall as a result of where your head is at. The amount of times I've seen a rugby player drop a ball at the beginning of a match and then go on to make mistake after mistake as their bottle further disintegrates.

This was the situation I found myself in at the beginning of this week, after dropping the ball in most dramatic fashion at the Krater last Saturday. It was a battle of the will to prevent myself from thinking about it all the time - a battle I wasn't entirely winning as the time came on Tuesday night in Lincoln for me to get back on the horse and do another gig.

In truth my confidence was shot. Not just shot - it looked like Peter Weller in the opening scenes of Robocop, pinned to the floor and blasted away beyond all recognition, bleeding profusely as the life ebbed painfully away.

Okay, that may be overly dramatic.

Sometimes I work well under extreme pressure, other times I fall to bits. In Edinburgh last year, as the weeks went by I began to defeat myself before even setting foot on the stage for my nightly show. I was overtired, unrelaxed, and had started to allow things that should just be a minor niggle to elevate into far, far more. My iron resolve dissolved and that was me fucked. Ironically, my compering at the Free Beer Show that I was resident compere of went from strength to strength, as it was just a relief to not feel quite so alone.

So, I was aware at the beginning of this week that I was potentially on the ropes, my knees beginning to go after a battering from, not only the audiences last weekend but also, perversely, potentially myself.

Oddly, the restoration of my confidence came from the most unlikely of places. I got a comment on this blog from somebody who had been present at the late show in Brighton. Don't bother going looking for it as I didn't put it up on the site, not out of any degree of shame (I'd already been open about my inadequate performance on the blog itself), but because I decided unusually to reply to it in a personal email rather than in the comments section.

So this message I received basically tore apart what had happened onstage last week, giving opinion and a couple of pointers for the future, all of which - as you may expect - I unceremoniously dismissed. However, I did spend a couple of hours replying to it, section by section, giving my side of the 'story' and justifying - as best I could - why what happened actually happened. The message I received, whilst ocassionally damning of my ability was written with a degree of sympathy and meant from a good place. I was pretty frank in my reply, and argued my case well, albeit with moments of perhaps being overly dogmatic - it was, let's not forget, a very 'personal' assessment that I was defending.

Anyway, point is, it was an overwhelmingly cathartic process breaking it down properly, something I would normally do on this here blog but just couldn't be fucked going over it all again in a public forum last week. So I approached my gig at Lincoln University with partially renewed belief in myself after all that, and when the compere Dan Nightingale told me that he had an almost identical experience at the Krater last year I was feeling almost fully cured of my comedy leprosy.

An hour later when I came off the stage I was back on track. It was an easy, casually-paced and laid-back performance to an appreciative audience, and the perfect tonic to what had preceeded it.

I decided after that show that for my next few gigs I would quite like a bit of challenge from my audiences, so I could regain confidence in my ability to work off-the-cuff. As if by magic, this is exactly what happened at both Oxfordshire on Thursday and Preston on Friday. Thursday I was compering, so had the luxury of pacing the 'battle' over the whole evening, and Friday I was doing a normal set so had the discipline of making 'fucking about' into an 'act'. Both came off perfectly well, and I now stand before you a phoenix from the flames with my comedic ability back on track and proven.

Backstage at the Krater I was teased by one of the other acts who said "You're only as good as your last gig - so you're shit". I can report that, as of today, my last gig was fucking ace, so that's what I am again.

Travelling up to the Preston gig I stopped in to visit my mum and dad in the North-West. It was a very fleeting visit as I was running late, but as I had managed to forget their Ruby Wedding anniversay last weekend despite the fact that my mum had been promoting it like Max Clifford for a month or so, the least I could do was drop off a card and stuff. Once the champagne and flowers had been dispatched (and they weren't cheap them by the way, don't be thinking I cut corners on them, I was feeling sufficiently guilty to open my wallet a little wider than I perhaps would have done if I'd remembered the anniversary in the first fucking place), the subject quickly got around to the dent in the back of my car.

I should say at this point that my dad, like most dads, has been known to talk an incredible amount of bollocks from time to time. He regularly phones me with nonsense rumours about the rugby league, and throws about opinions that he has overheard at work or seen on some obscure digital channel as absolute fact with alarming abundance.

On Friday he informed me that if I hit my car boot the dent would pop out. He was sitting on the sofa at the time, this was before he had even seen the dent itself. I told him that this was ridiculous, and as he was getting to his feet I told him in no uncertain terms that he was not going outside to punch my car. I reasoned that it could potentially make it worse, and as the dent has been causing me sleepless nights at my frustration with myself for not attempting to apprehend the vandals at the time, I did not want it to be any worse than it already was.

When I got home on Saturday, I was still thinking about the fucking dent and feeling my emotions slide towards the wrong side of depression. Every time I have gone to my boot in the last week I have winced on seeing the dent, a constant reminder of how fucking unfair life can be at times. As I went to my boot on Saturday to get my lightsaber out, I gave it a little tap with my fist. Nothing.

Of course it was bollocks.

But that seemed unfair as well.

I hit it much harder.

There was a big bang, so much so that I actually turned away to shield myself.

When I looked back, half of the dent had popped out.

I hit it again, harder. Another bang. The whole thing popped out.

My boot was back to normal. Literally, in a fucking second, the cause of many a dark mood over the last seven days was gone as quick as it had been bestowed on me.

Things are tentatively looking brighter.